It is common to control different systems, such as control systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), security, lighting, asset management or other facility management control systems, in various kinds of buildings.
It is important that the building control system, for example, maintains a desired state such as a specific temperature or airflow, monitors that no unauthorized access occurs and so on. However, occasionally the desired state is not maintained, e.g. in case of failure in a temperature or airflow regulating component or in case of improper handling, or triggering of the access control system. When the desired state is not maintained an alarm is usually sent to, or generated by, a computer server that monitors the building control system. The alarm must in most cases be attended to by maintenance personnel in order to overcome the reason for the alarm.
The international patent application WO 00/72285 discloses a system and method for monitoring and handling alarms released at a remote equipment such as HVAC equipment. A sensor is in communication with a piece of remote equipment and an interface unit that has a message generating mechanism is capable of receiving signals from the sensor. A central computer server is in communication with the interface unit from a variety of different data transports. When a sensor detects an exception condition, or an alarm, in a piece of remote equipment, the sensor transmits a signal to the interface unit, and the interface unit generates an incoming exception message and forwards the message to the server. The server forwards at least one outgoing exception message to at least one predetermined user-defined communication device based on the incoming exception message. Multiple outgoing exception messages may be forwarded to multiple communication devices in accordance with a user-defined message profile, or a single outgoing exception message may be forwarded in response to receipt of multiple incoming exception messages. The message profile is remotely configurable by the user.